


Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Deadliest of Them All?

by QueenIX



Series: Smoked Glass [3]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 16:51:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2236398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenIX/pseuds/QueenIX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garak wasn't going down like that.</p><p>A companion piece to  <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1855936">Smoked Glass</a>, an explicit mirror universe story featuring the Intendant and her supervisor. It's not necessary to read it first, but this is set after that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Deadliest of Them All?

Odo rolled Garak's limp body over with a booted foot. “Shall I dispose of this for you?”

“Don't trouble yourself," the Intendant replied. “You've worked so hard today. I'll have someone else deal with it." She kissed her way up his neck. "Besides," she purred, nipping his ear, "you have other things to do."

Odo smiled down at her. "As you wish." His eyes went back to the corpse at his feet, and his smile turned to a scowl. The shifter took a possessive grip of the Intendant's hip, and laid a final, brutal kick to Garak's ribs.

"Good riddance," the Intendant smiled. Together, they turned and left the room.

A few minutes passed. Then a few more. When he was certain the room was clear, that no one was coming back, and that the Intendant and her lover were well gone, Garak restarted his heart.

If he could laugh right now, he would. How could two such seemingly intelligent beings be so clueless about Cardassian physiology? Granted, only thirteen percent of the population was capable of thanatosis, so it was rarely seen outside the homeworld, but ignorance was not an excuse for sloppiness. They should have done their research. Garak was one of the few of his race who possessed the ability to play dead.

Thanatosis was a gift of genetics, an inheritance from his reptilian ancestors, but using it was not without price. It took time to reanimate the body, and the process was draining. Garak had used this feint only as a last resort. Once the body went into suspended animation, one became quite vulnerable, paralyzed, and therefor defenseless, and if anyone figured out there was still life in his body, they could easily dispatch it before he could do anything to stop it. Besides, something about using this ability had always seemed unsporting, like cheating at cards, or weighting the _jargoth_ in a game of _kel-ro_. Even men like him had to draw the line somewhere.

Then again, when it came to survival, who really cared about sportsmanship?

As his heartbeat stabilized, Garak set his lungs in motion. It hurt to breath. The shifter had hit him in the ribs, several times, but the pain wasn't so sharp before. It must have been that last kick the creature had leveled, adding insult to eradication. That shifter, he thought, as oxygen began reviving his muscles, as they twitched in fits and starts, was one clever ball of goo. Garak had never seen any of this coming.

Garak had been certain, quite certain, that the shifter had been destroyed, days ago. He had viewed the security footage along with the Intendant, watching as her strange Terran prisoner shot the shifter with a disruptor, murdering him before their very eyes. It was a fantastic sight. Garak had barely been able to contain himself as he watched that amorphous pile of protoplasm explode, and die, his mass flying apart and splattering all over ore processing, looking like so much fried pink pudding running thickly down the walls.

Garak could manage a smile now, so he did. Privately, he'd watched the security feed several times. The more he'd watched it, the better it got.

Despite the evidence, (who could survive a complete cell disruption?) Garak and the Intendant had been precipitous in pronouncing the shifter dead. Two nights ago, the thing had poured from an air vent, and pooled itself on his bedroom floor. It formed into the supervisor and crossed the room, taking a casual seat in the chair by his bed. Odo was injured, obviously, moving much slower than usual, but definitely not dead. Garak had been in shock, and it was the only thing that saved Odo that night. Had he not been so surprised by Odo's resurrection, Garak would have shot the shifter dead a second time.

As he sat in the dark, talking to a ghost, Garak had let himself get conned. Odo had professed a desire to seek revenge, claiming to blame the Intendant for his near-death. He wanted retribution, he'd said, and would be indebted if Garak would help him get it. Naturally, Garak had been skeptical. He knew the history between the Intendant and the supervisor, knew the shifter had a deep obsession with her. Garak inquired about the current state of Odo's feelings, but Odo had assured Garak that his heart's only desire was to end Kira Nerys, with his own two hands. After all, hadn't she been the one who sent the Terran insurgent to ore processing? Hadn't she planned this all along? Wasn't it she who had betrayed him? Odo had laced his words, and his demeanor, with a slight tang of paranoia, so that Garak believed the shifter had become a bit cracked. It was as if Odo truly believed the Intendant premeditated the whole thing.

He hated the shifter, but the idea of helping Odo get revenge on the Intendant was too much to resist. It had a darkly humorous appeal, a dramatic irony he couldn't ignore. It also eliminated his two biggest problems. Their sick fascination with one another was going to play to his advantage. He would help the shifter arrange the Intendant's abduction, wait for him to kill her, and make sure Odo got caught in the act. Garak would have Odo executed- for sure, this time- as a consequence for his crime of passion. He would be rid of the Intendant and her slinking supervisor in one blow. It was flawless.

As he and the shifter had negotiated the terms of their arrangement, discussing the nuts and bolts of betrayal, the finer details, like wrist restraints and paralytic drugs, Odo was composed. Civil, even. The shifter had been all business, no messy show of emotion, and perhaps that is why Garak had made such a fatal mistake. Revenge, as the Klingons said, was a dish best served cold. If Odo had shown any anger or excitement at the prospect of killing the Intendant, Garak would never have agreed to help him. He would have seen through the lie, but Odo had been solid ice, giving nothing of his true intentions away.

Still, Garak thought, flexing his waking limbs, Odo had made mistakes. The Intendant and her gelatinous plaything had been careless in leaving his body in this cell, unattended. There was also a saying on Cardassia. “Nothing is dead until you are sure it is dead.” In a culture with people so driven by deceit that even their DNA could play a rouse, the corpse of an enemy was never left unwatched. It was guarded until death could be officially confirmed, or, barring that, it was burned. Immediately. When one could dance over the ashes- or pink pudding- of one's enemy, then true accomplishment could be claimed.

Knowing this, Garak had no one to blame but himself for his current predicament. He, too, had been sloppy. He had been so eager to believe that years of deception and creeping around were about to pay off, that he would finally come to the position of power he so deserved. He had been so close to getting it all, and the dazzle of it had blinded him. Like a youngling, he had let his own grasping impatience cloud his judgment, and for that kind of mistake, there could be no forgiveness.

Lamenting his foolishness on the floor of his cell, however, was not going to fix things. Garak sat up slowly, and took inventory of his injuries. One shoulder was dislocated, one eye swelled shut, and his head ached terribly. There were at least a hundred places where he was bruised or broken. The shifter had done all this damage by hand, personally, and Garak found himself reluctantly admiring Odo's pride in his work. Still, Garak thought, his anger bubbling to surface, it was a blow to his own pride. It was infuriating when he thought about what all this had been for, why the shifter had done this. It was downright uncouth. The shifter could have laid claim to the Intendant, gotten what he wanted, and left Garak well out of it. All of this, the deceit, the drama, the last ten hours of excruciating pain, had all been over a piece of...Well. He hoped that liquid Lothario had enjoyed his piece, because Garak was about to make sure it was the last he ever got.

The spymaster staggered to his feet. He still couldn't completely fault the shifter, he found. The Intendant, and all that went with her, was a rare prize indeed. Even though Garak's tastes lied in a different direction, he could see where she would be worth it, were he so inclined. Fortunately, he wasn't. Unlike Odo, he now had nothing to worry about but himself, and he would make no mistakes this time. There was no hurry, after all. Garak had such delights in mind for the Intendant, and her intended, and he was going to take his sweet time in dishing them out.

Spotting a length of pipe left laying on the floor, Garak clucked a sound of disapproval. So careless, those two. He picked it up, and hefted it in his good hand. He moved to the door, waiting calmly for the unsuspecting unfortunate who would come to claim his corpse. For once, the Klingons had it right. Revenge was best served cold. And no one, Garak thought, his mouth twisting in a scaled and ruthless grin, was colder than a Cardassian.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on characters belonging to Paramount. The characters are theirs, the story is mine.


End file.
